X-Message-Number: 714
Date: 09 Apr 92 07:03:09 EDT
From: "Steven B. Harris" <>
Subject: Proposed Move To Arizona

   I hope you'll all forgive me for adding my two cents to the
Phoenix move controversy.

   First, I have to say that I'm not too concerned about the
Alcor Board riding "roughshod" over the membership.  Alcor does
not belong to the membership, who in many cases are simply
customers.  Alcor "belongs" to those who've given their blood,
sweat, tears, substance and hearts to it.  All of the people on
the Alcor Board have done so, and in this sense I second every-
thing which Keith has said on that point.  I'm not on the Alcor
Board myself, have no desire to be, and have no say in how Alcor
is run, so I'm quite free to say this without being accused of
being self-serving.  It's simply that I'd much rather be depen-
dant on the long term stability of a corporation run like the
enduring Roman Catholic Church, than one run like our no-tomorrow
deficit-spending idiot-infested half-paralyzed U.S. Congress. 
How about you all?  I'm in favor of democracy in cryonics to this
extent: those who have irreparable disagreements with the Alcor
Board are free to vote with their feet.

   Second, I see no great reason to have permanent storage of
patients "near" the largest concentration of members.  That we
should have the facility near the members is one of those things
that seems to make intuitive sense at first, but when you try to
put your finger exactly on why you think so, you find it just
doesn't wash:  

  a) I've heard the volunteer argument.  Unfortunately, it is a
myth that the good members who live in L.A. keep Alcor going by 
routinely going out to the facility to polish dewars (anybody who
works at Alcor want to comment?).  Volunteer work does get done
in Southern California to be sure, but it's mainly volunteer work
in preparation for social gatherings of the sort what would still
be held in L.A. even if Alcor storage and main offices moved to
Phoenix.  99% of the day-to-day nitty gritty of cryonics gets
done by the staff, and always will.  As for suspensions, most
volunteering there is done by people who would either move with
Alcor to Phoenix, or those who fly to Riverside already and could
nearly as easily fly to Phoenix.  The few volunteers of little
means of whom neither of these is true could presumably be
replaced by people in Phoenix.  Yes, there is a good argument
that Alcor monthly "open board meetings" should be held in the
place of the greatest concentration of members, but I see no
reason why most of these meetings (perhaps the fraction equal to
membership partition between Phoenix and L.A.) could not still
continue to be held in L.A. even AFTER the move.  By commercial
jet, L.A. to Phoenix is 80 minutes, and the round trip cost is
less than $100.  That's do-able by a couple of board members
living in Phoenix, surely.  

   b) From the cryonics technical standpoint, I see no reason why
patient storage has to be near membership either.  As we all
know, it's warm ischemic time from cardiac arrest to start of
cold washout that does most of the damage--- almost certainly NOT
any reasonable time at ice temperature with blood substitute in
place (remember, dogs survive many hours of this last, apparently
with no brain damage at all).  It now takes six hours at least to
get a patient washed out and iced and back to Alcor, even in
L.A.-- and often another couple of hours after that getting a
surgeon or whatnot.  In the face of this, another two hours to
transport to Phoenix is nothing to be too concerned about.  Once
cryoprotectant perfusion is performed, of course, there is reason
to begin cooling below zero Centigrade immediately (since this
stuff has some toxicity), and once some freezing has taken place,
as little transport should be done as possible.  But this is only
an argument that *cryoprotectant* perfusion facilities be in the
same building as storage.  All in all, it argues that there is
very little that REALLY needs to be done on site in California
for a California member, that can't be done (quite literally) in
a garage (as was proved at the last suspension).  Certainly
nothing that requires our own lab building. 

   On the other hand, there are strong reasons not to have
storage in California.  One is earthquakes; we have about an 8%
chance of the big one within 5 years, and if only two big dewars
are punctured or lose vacuum when that happens, we may have a
disaster.  

   The other reason is shear expense:  why pay more for a simple
function than you have to?  Cryonic storage doesn't require much-
- merely utilities, power, air access, road access and land--
preferably the cheapest seismically stable land available with
the shortest move distance from Riverside (in order to minimize
moving costs).  To me these criteria mean developed desert land
outside the California state borders, and that in turn means
Nevada or Arizona.  It's also helpful to be somewhere near a
metropolitan area for easiest (and assured) access to liquid
nitrogen, so the Phoenix and Las Vegas areas seem to be natural
choices.   

   I can't speak to the question of whether Dave Pizer has found
the best of all possible places within the borders of Nevada and
Arizona to move to, but I can testify after seeing the proposed
facility in person that he HAS found a peach of a building, and
that a major runway of the Scottsdale airport does indeed all but
run into the back door.  (For the first time I see a building
here that can be turned into the sort of place that I always
envisioned a cryonics building as being, in my idealistic
visions.)  One can ALWAYS mount the argument that we don't have
enough information on this yet, but on the other hand it is clear
that we will NEVER have enough information to make the ultimate
best choice on this-- we simply do not have the resources to do
that level of research.  So the question at this point is not
whether this building is the very best choice-- that's not an
option-- but whether anyone has a better suggestion.  

   Well, why shouldn't we wait a bit and study the problem at
least a little more?  We can certainly do that, and we would
certainly be foolish to move without feeling out the local
politics some more (and we are not obligated to spend a lot of
money on the building that we have bid on, as I understand it,
for some time--more than enough time to do some political nosing
about).  But (besides this nice deal we have the chance at now)
there ARE reasons to move as soon as we can.  The light in-
dustrial real-estate market in California is incredibly bad right
now (as it happens, I know someone who just rented a building
with several thousand square feet of space in the Riverside area
and paid less than I do for my apartment in L.A.; the building
had stood empty for more than a year), and more importantly, the
market has nowhere to go but worse.  As I already commented in my
message on the ACS Titanic Building (so I hereby dub it), with
defense-related light industry shortly scheduled to destruct in
California, and the rest of light industry headed for the tall
timber to escape taxation, this market is probably headed for
free fall.  

   To be sure, because of the general recession, industrial real-
estate is soft all over, including in Phoenix, but as long as we
KNOW that Alcor will have to move out in a few years (and we do--
we have a space problem), the operant factor here is not the
direction of Phoenix real-estate prices, but the direction of the
*differential* between Phoenix and Riverside.   Given the general
exodus of industry from California, it is hard for me to believe
that Phoenix prices will ever drop as fast as they will here. 
This leads to the conclusion that the longer Alcor waits on this,
the worse off we'll be.  That's my guess-- make of it what you
will.
 
   Whether we can go now all depends, I suppose, on how much
money Alcor can raise.  But we can probably get at least 50% of
the cost of the new building out of the old building (if we can
convince Symbex holders to roll over their money), and the rest
could be paid for (for example) if we could convince only three
Alcor high-rollers to pre-fund their own whole-body suspensions. 
We shall see.  In any case, I hope it all works, because if it
doesn't and Alcor waits too long and gets stuck in California for
the whole bottom-out ride of the coming big recession, it's not
going to be pretty.

                                      Regards,

                                        Steve Harris

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=714